“Outraging the Modesty”

From the Singapore Straits Times:

A Briton on a visit here was charged on Friday with outraging the modesty of a 30-year-old woman in a Clarke Quay club.

Austin Charles Arnold Cowburn, 34, is alleged to have grabbed her buttock in the China One pub at 4am on April 3 2011.

AOL Travel adds:

The maximum sentence for the crime is two years in prison coupled with a fine and a lashing across the bare butt with a rattan cane. The penalties can (and likely will) be changed if the judge feels like avoiding an international incident.

The groping occurred at the luxurious China One nightclub where Cowburn, a recruitment specialist currently working in Qatar, proved to not be so great at his job after all.

A notoriously rule-bound country, Singapore has the tendency to treat its citizens like unruly school kids. To wit, anyone convicted of littering three time is forced to clean the streets while wearing a bib saying: “I am a litterer.”

Flogging for a minor offense. How barbaric! How un-American!!! I mean, here, when somebody grabs a girl’s ass at a club, you start a fight and shoot and kill the guy. That’sthe American way. I love civilized progress.

Now excuse me while I go “outrage” my wife’s modesty. Hmmm, that might just be a new catchphrase here at home.